New coach familiar with team

RICK SCOPPE - Sports Editor

Thursday

Nov 29, 2012 at 12:01 AMNov 29, 2012 at 10:52 AM

Neil Blankenship may be in his first year as Swain County’s head football coach, but he is no stranger to the tradition that has seen the Maroon Devils win at least one state championship in each of the last five decades.

Neil Blankenship may be in his first year as Swain County’s head football coach, but he is no stranger to the tradition that has seen the Maroon Devils win at least one state championship in each of the last five decades.

Blankenship has been at the Bryson City high school for two decades and had spent the past eight years as defensive coordinator before replacing Sam Patillo after Swain County claimed its eighth NCHSAA championship in 2011.

So he understands the pressure of being the man whose job is to oversee a program that took home its first title — and only one in 2-A — in 1979 under Boyce Deitz, who also captured three straight 1-A crowns from 1988 to 1990.

Coach Rod White brought home 1-A championships in 2001 and 2004, and Patillo guided the Maroon Devils to the 1-AA title last year.

To summarize: Swain County has won eight state titles and finished as the state runner-up twice. Overall, the Maroon Devils have won nearly 80 percent of their playoff games (81-23) in 32 playoff appearances since 1972.

It’s another to scare a new head coach, much less an opponent.

But as Swain County (15-0) prepares to play Southwest (13-1) for the 1-AA title Saturday at Carter-Finley Stadium in Raleigh, Blankenship seemed to just shrug when asked if he felt any pressure in taking over such a tradition-laden program.

“Any coach is under pressure because in this business you look at what’s gone on (at N.C. State) and what’s going on up at Auburn, we’re at a smaller level, but there’s one thing about it, high school football coaches a lot of times are under the fire,” he said. “You’ve got to win and win now. That’s what they want.

“If you go 10-3 or whatever, you think that’s a good year. But there’s people in the community don’t think that’s good enough. So there’s always pressure in this job. But really at Swain we send very few kids off to play college ball. Over the years out of those championships we’ve won very few of those kids have gone on (to play college football).

“But you’re trying to make them better men. That’s what a lot of people don’t understand. That’s what we’re trying to do is develop young men.”

While that may keep things in perspective for Blankenship and his staff, they all still know their job is to win on the field as well — as they did last year in beating Ayden-Grifton 20-14 to capture the school’s latest title.

“We went in knowing that we were preseason picks. But it’s like we told the kids, we’ve got to handle this one thing at a time. What we did was showed them a bull’s-eye chart and (said), ‘(As) defending champs, you’re already got that bull’s eye.’

“Our kids have done a great job. Each week they just handled that game.”

This year’s team is, as Southwest coach Phil Padgett called it, “a typical Swain County” squad, which means the Maroon Devils may not have any single player who stands out or who might be headed to Notre Dame or Alabama, but they are collectively and individually fundamentally sound.

Or, to put it another way, there are few obvious weaknesses, which shouldn’t come as a surprise given Swain County has won 26 straight games and are averaging 46.1 points while having given up more than 24 points only once this season.

And while the Maroon Devils have no shutouts on defense, they held 10 teams to 10 points or less.

There is also no quit in Swain County, which rallied from a 21-0 deficit to beat Monroe 28-21 last week to advance to the finals.

“We’ve been fortunate,” Blankenship said.

For the record, Swain County runs out of a split-back veer attack on an offense that features four seniors up front as well as a senior quarterback and two senior 1,000-yard receivers. On defense, the Maroon Devils may start out in a 3-4-4 scheme but often wind up in a different front, which almost certainly will be the case against the run-oriented Stallions.

Offensively, quarterback Raymius Smith has thrown for 2,345 yards and 39 touchdowns while completing 126 of 200 passes. The 6-foot, 170-pounder is only the second player in school history to throw for more than 2,000 yards — the other was Heath Shuler, who went on to play in the NFL after a standout career at the University of Tennessee.

Leading the run game is 5-7, 170-pound Garrett Lane, who has rushed for 1,156 yards on 138 carries and 20 TDs. Blake Wright, a 5-10, 190-pound junior, has run for 752 yards on 93 carries and scored 11 TDs.

Tisho handles the punting for Swain County while Colyn Petty is the place-kicker.

“I was the weight lifting coach for this group in the eighth grade,” Blankenship said. “They talked about state championships from then. … I can remember (that) and them trying to live that dream because that’s what it is, a dream. A lot of our kids they’re not going to play at the next level. So this is it for them.”

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